I'll Keep It Safe
by Ceryle
Summary: The last whereabouts of Dean's necklace (AKA the Samulet) as told through a series of conversations between Bobby and Sam. Seasons 5–8, but reflective of season 11.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Here, the whereabouts of Dean's amulet, as told through a series of conversations between Sam and Bobby. Originally, this story had an ambiguous ending. I toyed with continuing it for months, but then 11x20 "Don't Call Me Shurley" aired, and I just had to (potentially, possibly) bridge this narrative to the current season. The additions are in Chapter 2, so that the original story is preserved in Chapter 1 (with a few minor tweaks and one line added at the end).

Spoilers and references through season 8.

Regarding language: If it's in the show without being bleeped, it's fair game.

* * *

I'll Keep It Safe

"Hey, Bobby, can I talk to you for a sec?"

Sam lingered awkwardly at the threshold to the library, leaning against the doorframe and trying to find something to do with the hand that wasn't buried in his jacket pocket. It ended up in his hair, absently clutching and twisting the strands on the back of his head.

Bobby's eyebrows twitched as he gazed up at the 6-foot-5 man looking for all the world like the shy 7-year-old whose brother once pushed him into this very same room to ask Uncle Bobby for a ride to the public library. He was all fidgety then, too, eyes big as planets.

Now the kid was counting down the hours 'til hellfire, and damn if that wouldn't make any man fidgety. If he was being truthful, Bobby didn't want to have this conversation, whatever it was going to be about (and he could make a few educated guesses), but he couldn't turn Sam down, not now. Not ever, really.

"Sure," he said aloud. Then, after Sam didn't move, "You just gonna stand there and look pretty?"

Sam huffed a laugh and pushed away from the doorway, one hand still fidgeting in his hair and the other still fidgeting in his jacket pocket. "No, I uh…I have a favor to ask you."

That kind of conversation, then. _Aw, shoot_. "Shoot."

"I, uh… Can you keep this for me? You know, for after…"

"I know." Bobby cut him off before things got too morbid then glanced down at the object Sam had pulled from his pocket. It was as familiar to Bobby as any of his old, half-chewed ball caps: an ugly little charm he gave to Sam almost two decades ago as a present for John. The same one he saw bouncing around Dean's neck instead of John's the next time the boys came to visit — and every time thereafter. The same one he gave to Sam a second time after he lifted it from a lifeless body and placed it in Sam's hands with fingers he pretended weren't shaking. The same one he watched Dean reluctantly hand over to the angel in a hospital room, and the same one that hadn't reappeared around Dean's neck, even though it was old news that Cas had returned from his fruitless search.

He'd never asked Sam what happened, and he didn't ask him now. Nor did he ask him why it was Bobby, not Dean, the kid was holding the charm out to. "Of course," was what he said instead, reaching for the necklace. "I'll keep it safe."

Sam let out a breath and looked so relieved and so like that skittish 7-year-old, it made Bobby's heart feel heavier than a hemi engine. _Dammit, boy._

"Thank you, Bobby. Really. It means a lot." Sam's mouth made motions like it was practicing the next part, or forcing the words to line up right. "I didn't want to…I just…I hope, someday, he'll ask for it."

Sam's eyes started going all dewy and Bobby quickly concentrated on twisting the cap off a fresh bottle of hunter's helper. "Ah, you know your brother. I'm sure he will," Bobby told the beverage.

"Yeah. Yeah…" Sam trailed off and melted from the room. Bobby looked from his beer to the amulet to the paper-strewn room that suddenly seemed so empty. He tipped back the bottle and took a long drink.

* * *

"Hey, Sam, can I talk to you for a sec?"

Sam had just risen from the table where two beer bottles sat empty. He was turning away from Bobby, already keyed on the front door, but he swiveled mid-exit, eyebrows raised, hands lifted from his sides in a universal gesture of accommodation. "Sure thing, Bobby. What's up?"

The older hunter snorted wryly at the contrast in atmosphere from the last time they'd had this conversation. Just a few months ago, the apocalypse was in full swing, earthquakes and lightning were tearing up the planet, and Sam was one word away from letting Lucifer ride shotgun on a one-way road trip to hell. The kid was bumbling and misty-eyed and had made Bobby feel like a sappy old fool.

Funny how things change — and how little comfort Bobby took from it.

"Well, seein's how you're not in the pit, I just wondered if you wanted it back."

That familiar little crease appeared between Sam's eyebrows. "Wanted what back?"

Bobby almost didn't want to remind him — there was his answer, clear enough. And damn, but it smarted a little. "The necklace? Dean's necklace?"

The switch flipped and Sam's face brightened. "Yeah, yeah, of course." He flicked his head as if to fling away the cobwebs. "Thanks again for keeping it for me. But, uh, if you wouldn't mind just holding onto it a little longer…?" Eyebrows were raised again. It was almost that puppy-dog face Dean used to complain about. Almost.

"Don't mind at all," Bobby said, not knowing whether it was the truth. "Just let me know when you're ready for it."

"Definitely. I will. Thanks, Bobby." Sam turned and vanished from the room. Bobby heard the door rap shut and the Charger growl to life. Sometimes he actually missed the apocalypse. _Ain't that the damnedest thing_. Bobby shook his head and grabbed another beer from the fridge.

* * *

"Hey, Bobby, can I talk to you for a sec?"

Bobby hated himself for the instant of doubt he still felt whenever Sam approached him. No matter how many times Sam had apologized, and no matter how firmly his brain knew this was the real Sam, not the Terminator wannabe that had chased him around the house with an axe, Bobby's survival instincts had to overcome the split-second urge to head for the hills. The realization made him feel sick every time.

He swallowed his disgust and set down the carburetor he'd been cleaning. "What's on your mind, son?"

The old hunter winced as soon as the word left his lips, and he saw the ghost of pain on Sam's face as the kid's eyes shut down. _Well done, genius._

"I just, uh… you know what? Never mind." Sam's eyes searched the work table for something safe to talk about, some polite excuse to bolt. "Can I bring you another beer?"

Bobby shook his head. "Your apology was accepted the first time, ya idjit," he grumbled, picking up the carburetor again. "But yeah, I'll take a beer."

* * *

"Hey, Sam, can I talk to you for a sec?"

Sam's eyes were glued to the other end of the couch. The TV prattled on in Spanish to Sam's left, and Bobby could hear the squeals and groans of old plumbing as Dean turned on the shower in the other room. Sam didn't move, except he was sort of trembling.

"Sam!"

The kid jumped, and wide, wild eyes snapped to Bobby's face. He watched as Sam's hand, still twitching, came up to rub the other palm like a worry stone. Sam's eyes began to calm, and the old Sam came back. Mostly. "Sorry, Bobby. You need something?"

Bobby sighed and shook his head. Not the time for bad news. Maybe later, when Lucifer wasn't hanging around. "Nah, just wondering if you wanted a beer."

* * *

"Hey, Bobby, can I talk to you for a sec?"

Sam dropped onto the porch steps, resting his arms on his knees and letting his hands dangle in the dead space between. "I can't find the necklace. I looked for it in your stuff. It-it wasn't a big deal or anything, but I wish I could ask you where it was." He looked down at the splintering boards. "I mean, for all I know, it's just a pile of ash in your house. But I think you'd have told me. Or maybe not.

"I was hoping…I know Cas said it was worthless, but with Lucifer, I thought maybe…I'm just running out of ideas here, Bobby. Dean tries to help, but there's only so much he can do when the problem's inside my own damn mind. But focusing on Dean seems to work a little, so I thought maybe the necklace would somehow…" He laughed lightly, a wet, pathetic sound to his own ears. "Yeah, it sounds stupid when I say it out loud."

Suddenly shy, Sam brought one hand up to scrub the back of his head.

"God, Bobby…I wish you were here. Just…yeah. I miss you. I hope you're having drinks with Ellen and Ash and giving the angels hell. But man, we need you here. It's not the same, you know? It's just not." He trailed off, picking at his brand-new stitches.

"Oh, stop, you're making my mascara run," Lucifer sniffled. He was perched on the hood of a crappy Datsun they'd boosted last week, the same spot Dean used to occupy on the Impala when they'd park it in a deserted field on clear, starry nights. The angel's blonde hair shone whitish in the pale light as he swiped at his eyes with melodramatic flair. Sam closed his own eyes and dug into his palm.

"But I'm hurt, Sam. You think a little necklace would make me go away?" The angel's voice stuttered as blood began to seep under Sam's thumbnail. "The Sam-n-Dean love connection isn't _that_ strong. Otherwise, he wouldn't have thrown it away. Right, Sam?"

 _Go. The hell. Away._ Sam grimaced as he twisted his nail further into the torn flesh. No response. When at last he opened his eyes, he was alone. _Thank God._ With a sigh, Sam pushed himself up from the porch steps, groaning as the weight of two centuries in hell pressed on his bones. How was it possible to feel so old and so powerlessly _young_ at the same time? _Dammit, Bobby_. With one last glance at the junk car, its hood mercifully empty of anything but chipping paint and moonlight, he went inside to see if his brother spared him a beer.

* * *

Bobby shook his head ruefully from his place by (or sort of _within_ ) the window as Sam trudged inside the cabin. He slapped a hand through the glass. "Balls!"


	2. Chapter 2

"Hey, Sam, can I talk to you for a sec?"

Sam jumped, clearly still unused to hearing his old friend's voice in places other than his own fool head. Being reminded that his boys were more used to him being _not there_ than _there_ made Bobby's heart feel tight, and he fleetingly wondered how that sensation was even possible. _Vengeful spirit? Hell, you're a damn softie._

"Bobby, yeah, of course. You OK?" Sam's face was all eagerness and concern as he looked up from his laptop, like he thought Bobby might have some existential turmoil he needed to vent in a healthy, nonviolent way, and Sam was just so damn grateful for the opportunity to play therapist. Even after hanging out in the Cage, and losing his soul, and sharing his brain with the Devil, the kid still had a bleeding heart the size of Texas. It was kind of cute.

Bobby quirked a knowing eyebrow. "Well, I ain't itchin' to rearrange the furniture, if that's what you mean." Sam blushed a little, somewhere between embarrassed and relieved. "But I, uh, heard you talkin' to me once, before I could, you know…" he said, gesturing down at his there-but-not-there body as if Sam couldn't figure out what he meant. But Sam wasn't paying attention to Bobby's Vanna White impersonation — he was suddenly too busy studying a fascinating part of the floor, so Bobby just kept going. "You were askin' about Dean's necklace."

At that, the kid's eyes shot to his, and they were doing a pretty poor job of hiding the spark of hope that was begging for permission to take over. _Oh, kid._ "Y-you heard me?" Sam stuttered.

"Isn't that what I just said?" There was no irritation in Bobby's voice, just familiarity, affection and thinly veiled regret, but Sam's optimistic stare didn't waver. "Anyway, I know where it is — or where it _was_ , rather. Obviously you don't need it to beat back the Devil anymore, but I thought you might want to know what happened to it, all the same."

By the time he reached the word _where_ , Sam was already out of the chair, fidgeting to go somewhere even though he had no idea if it was across the room or to another planet. Bobby suspected it didn't matter either way. His heart twinged again as Sam's eyes flicked over the room, as if he half-expected the necklace to be sitting pretty on the counter, or his brother to return from the tavern at any moment with a toothy "Surprise!" and the amulet swinging against his chest. "So? Where is it?"

 _Aye, there's the rub._ Bobby scratched his beard and quit looking at Sam. "It _was_ in that locked drawer in my desk. After the fire, I tried to get it for you, but my desk was just a blackened shell buried under a truckload of other blackened crap, and there weren't no goin' in there to see if anything survived without risking the whole thing collapsing." Bobby turned a remorseful gaze to Sam, who looked about two decades older than he had ten seconds ago. "I tried to tell you, but you were seein' Lucifer everywhere and we were up to our nostrils in black goo, and then I…" He trailed off — no need to finish that one, either. "I'm real sorry, Sam. I should've told you sooner."

Sam shrugged, a tired smile broadcasting his disappointment instead of masking it. "It wasn't your fault, Bobby. Anyway, it's no big deal. Just a necklace," he said casually, and Bobby didn't call him on the lie. There was no point when they both knew the kid's big, bleeding heart had just cracked more than a little bit. "But, uh, thanks for letting me know, Bobby. I appreciate it, really." Sam was in the chair again, and his eyes were back on the laptop screen, though Bobby could tell they weren't tracking anything.

"Don't mention it," he blurted automatically, but Sam was too engrossed in whatever he wasn't reading to continue the conversation.

 _Way to brighten the mood_. Bobby's chest just plain _hurt_ — paranormal physics be damned — as he faded from the corporeal realm. Being dead was a real pain in the ass, but then, so was being alive, more often than not. Ah, hell. He was getting too old for this philosophical crap. Damn, what he wouldn't give for a beer.

* * *

"Hey, Bobby. It's me."

Sam snorted as he squinted past the sun-faded DANGER sign into the skeleton of Bobby Singer's living room. Here he was, announcing himself to a dead man at the dead man's burned-down house, and expecting the dean man to open the pile of ash that used to be a door and invite Sam in for a couple of beers. _Sorry about the mess; have a seat on the charcoal._

Man, he was losing it, and this time he didn't even have Yellow-Eyes or demon blood or Lucifer to blame. _The Devil made me do it. Dick made me do it. I did it for dick. Ha._

His inner monologue sounded a helluvalot like Dean, and Sam couldn't…just couldn't. So he ignored the DANGER sign, gingerly climbed over a few piles of shiny, sooty somethings, and kept talking to Bobby instead. "You weren't wrong. This is pretty gnarly," he noted, balancing on one foot at a time as he searched for safe places to plant his hunting boots, which were still speckled with bits of Leviathan. Eventually they would have to go.

"I, uh, brought the Impala." Sam's voice brightened, forcefully. "It — she needs some work, and I figured you would still have tools and parts lying around here. Not that we — I need any tools. We still carry Dad's old toolbox everywhere. I swear that thing weighs more than the car itself sometimes." He picked his way toward the library, ducking under fallen beams and trying not to upset whatever was keeping parts of the second story suspended over his head. "But it seemed like a good idea to fix her up somewhere familiar, you know?" He let out a breathy giggle. "God, I even sound like him out loud. Sorry, that probably didn't make any sense."

He cleared his throat, stepped over the twisted frame of a fold-out couch bed. "We killed him — Dick Roman. We finally got the bastard. So you can consider yourself officially avenged. I should make you a certificate or something." _You're losing it, Sammy_. "You should have been there, Bobby. I still can't believe that stupid plan worked. I mean, Meg actually drove the Impala _through_ the big sign in front of Roman Enterprises. I'm not sure I want to know how she convinced Dean to let her do it. And Cas was somehow lucid enough to find the real Dick, and Dean stabbed him in the neck with that bone and he…exploded. The rest of them died too, just like that. _Cut off the head_ and so on, I guess. There was black goo all over the place…I haven't seen how the police are spinning it."

There. Sam pried a charred ceiling beam away from a mound of debris as if he were playing the world's highest-stakes game of Jenga — one false move, and he would be buried among the ashes of all the other freaky things that had found a home here. He carefully moved the remains of lore books and bones and a piece of ductwork out of the way until something resembling Bobby's old desk glowered blackly at him from the middle of the mess.

"But the thing is, when — when it happened, when Dick exploded, Dean just…disappeared. He's gone, Bobby. N-no body, no flash of light. Just gone. I thought maybe Cas zapped them somewhere safe, cause he's gone too, but it's been a few days now, so…"

There weren't drawers anymore — just warped metal tracks. Below the desk frame were dunes of blackened detritus, peppered with bits of metal that might have once been drawer pulls, bullets or even shards of Bobby's lamp. Sam ignored the way his chest clenched as he knelt before the desk, and then he began sifting his fingers through the ash.

"I tried praying to him, of course, just in case." He smiled wryly. "Not that he always answers my prayers. I'll never be his favorite person in the world."

Sam's heart was in his ears, and he swiped a hand under his nose, not caring that he probably just smudged soot across his upper lip. Dean would have smirked and called him Luigi or something. Sam kept digging.

"Crowley showed up. Did I tell you that? He took Kevin. They're gone too. Everybody's gone." Sam's fingers scraped and scrabbled, gaining speed, moving to a new pile whenever his fingernails dug into the floor.

"So, my plan is to fix up the Impala, and then…go…go…" His words dribbled into nothingness as the movement of his hands grew more and more frantic, forgotten chunks of Bobby's life crumbling between his fingers. It was all ash. Ash, ash and more ash. _Ashes, ashes, we all fall—_ "Dammit!"

Sam sat back and blinked up at the reddening sky seeping in through the holes where Bobby's attic used to be. "I don't know what to do, Bobby," he breathed. "I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do."

He sat there for a few moments, or maybe a century, his blood pumping loudly in the stillness and taunting him like some kind of Poe remix. _Alone. Alone. Alone._ "God, I'm losing it," he huffed, and threw one last piece of who-the-hell-cares into the heap around his knees. It struck with a metallic _plink!_

Before Sam even consciously registered the sound, his fingers attacked the spot, shaking and wild, until they closed around a cold metal shape. Trembling, he pulled it out of the ashes. The little horned figure was dusty and would probably smell like soot for the next century, but there it was in all its ugliness, more radiant than ever. And by some ludicrous miracle, the cord was still looped through, totally intact. Sam was kneeling in the burned husk of a house at a desk that was more charcoal than wood, and that damn cord was untouched, like nothing had happened.

This time, it was definitely Dean's voice in his head. _Well, son of a bitch._

All he could do was laugh.

He giggled and choked until his ribs ached and his eyes burned and he was convinced he had finally cracked for good. Finally, he stutter-stepped upright, the necklace clutched in his hand. It was warm now. The sky was purplish. His legs ached. Everything smelled like fire. His senses left a trail of staccato messages for his brain as Sam traipsed toward the exit, but he was too exhausted to pay attention. He was going to get out of this ruin, and then in the morning he would start fixing the Impala, and then he would go God-knows-where and do God-knows-what. Sam certainly didn't know, and he no longer cared that he didn't know.

That night, he propped himself on the Chevy's slightly dented hood, beer sweating in his hand, Dean's necklace warm and heavy in his pocket. Sam tipped his bottle toward the heavens with a soft, dopey smile that he could almost feel.

"Thanks, Bobby."

He raised the bottle to his lips and drank deeply.


End file.
